Too Late
by Milli Moi
Summary: Bucky Barnes is in a place he never expected to be. Most of his life was a place he never expected to be but looking back and discovering the opportunity he never knew he had turns out to be the inspiration he needs to move forwards


Many people will end up remembering the first time they went to bed together through an outcome of that day. Even back in the forties, they knew of girls who had ended up pregnant and been sent away by their families for a 'holiday' with an aunt no one had ever heard of. There were also the couples that would be together for the rest of their lives, they would grow up and grow old in each others company. Sometimes, there would be horrible results which haunted one or both people involved, maybe they contracted an infection or maybe their parents found out and the kids were prevented from seeing each other again.

Most of the guys back in his years as a young man would not truly experience that first time with a woman until the night of their wedding, and he had expected that would be the case for him. Life had other plans, everything had gone so wrong that it couldn't even have been dreamt of. They always say that when a person dies, that is when you regret all the things you didn't tell them, and now as he sat on a wooden park bench in the bitter cold, holding an old battered file in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, he knew better than ever what that feeling was.

There was a familiarity the first time he saw her, something about the way she was almost smiling as she glanced back at him even though she was likely to die at his hands. It was the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline rush that she had. The way her flaming hair fluttered out behind her, dancing in the wind, the familiarity was all he had known at that time, they had treated him, removing his memories and warping his thoughts and she was gone for a time.

The second time was more than that. He hadn't been in control of his actions, he was following the orders of someone else, but when she lay with her back against a wooden table, her lower legs resting on his shoulders after she had tried and failed to use her thighs to bring him down. He watched the colour drain from around his hand which was clamped against her throat, her face beginning to go pink.

It had been a flash in front of his eyes, as though a photograph had stuck to a window, the way that leaves did in the autumn. It was only a glimpse, but he saw her again. She looked younger, her hair splayed out like a mane around her head. He stood in the same place but instead of against his neck, her knees sat on either side of his thighs. His hand held her neck still, but this time her eyes were closed and her expression wasn't as panicked.

It was too quick, too quick for him to process that image, had he tried to kill this woman before? Before his thoughts had come to, he was thrown back into the fight and his mind swapped for the mind of the killer, the mind they had programmed.

When they fixed him after all the mess had come clean, he knew her. God, he knew her and he could not believe that he didn't the first time he saw her. Natalia - although she called herself Natasha now - she was their best, the young girl with unbelievable talent. It was the powers of the KGB that put them together, wanting to test Natasha's quick skills against the brawn of the soldier.

The memory he had seen, which popped up as he pinned her down and tried to kill her, had been that memory so many people keep tucked away. The day that he remembered, when they had managed to unplug that section of his brain, he hadn't slept. All night he thought of what this meant. What did it mean that the only person who knew the soldier as well as Bucky was still alive? What did it mean that she hadn't disclosed this to the others? What did it mean for him, should he tell her? Or had she buried those memories deep?

He knew nothing of what had happened to her, the day he was taken from the compound he was told only that he was being sent elsewhere and that part of this was because he had become too close to the young girl in the widow programme. They hadn't even called her by name - they never did.

Here she was, so many years later, alive and thriving. She kept the name they gave her, except singular, she was not _a_ Black Widow, she was _the _Black Widow. She had aged only a little given the time frame, but he presumed that was because of the drugs they pumped into her. She had told him about the attempts by the programme to recreate Captain America in their soldiers. She had come through all that and out the other side, as he had, but she had done it without him.

When he had sat on the polished tile floor in his room that night he remembered the rest of the photograph-memory. Bucky had always intended to wait for marriage, he was a good kid and that was what was expected, but the world he knew with Natasha was one where marriage was not an option he could ever see. They were both young, her even younger, and they clung to each other to get through the pain. That was how he had ended up bedding her. The image he had seen, when he had thought he was trying to kill the young girl had cut out the feelings; the dialogue. It missed out that only moments before, naked and insecure, she had been encouraging him. It missed out that with eyes closed Natasha was not fearing death in the memory, but adjusting her body with his. It hadn't been new to her - something which sickened him more now than it ever had at the time - she had been trained to lie with any man she had to, but the love had been new, the freedom from pain had been new.

On the bench he felt those memories bring his blood to the boil, he wanted to follow the example of his mother's kettle when it reached the boiling point and scream. He tossed the file to the side watching as it slid along the bench and flopped off the end. The anger began to release him but it didn't make any of it better, placing the coffee cup on the floor by his feet and let his face fall into his hands.

The file had been found for him - one of those strings the scattered remains of the team had managed to pull - it had been tucked away in the back on Natasha's SHIELD file. The rest of the file had been clean and typed on crisp paper, it was filled with mission reports, accidents and Incident forms and training paperwork but this folder, the one now lying on the damp grass, was different. The brown folder was made of old cardboard which had turned fuzzy with age, it was dog-eared and there were various stains on the front. Everything within the file was handwritten in Cyrillic. This file, the one he doubted many had ever seen, contained her history in the Red Room. It had held the secrets to what happened next, and he was both angered and glad he had seen them.

Back in their days, before the internet, what you learned of the birds and the bees came from your parents and friends. You learned what you needed to know but nothing more, and there were very few other places to find the information. With that knowledge, he understood why Natasha hadn't known, no one had taught her those key things that a girl needed to know. They had seen the signs that Natasha had missed, that he had missed. Had she been more tired, queasy, had she put on weight? He couldn't remember, he hadn't taken any notice but they did.

The letter to Ivan Somodorov from Madame B was what caught Bucky's eye. It had stood out because it was different, the paper was smaller and lighter with a different style than the other sheets, ironically the letter explained what had stood out to the woman who managed the widows. She mentioned in training that she had spotted a change in the young Natalia over the past several weeks and had been keeping a cautious eye. It stated that Natalia seemed to be gaining weight around her stomach area, she appeared pale, but her behaviour had not changed otherwise. The woman was speculating that the young Natasha may have been carrying a baby.

A second entry gave the results of routine blood and urine tests which the girls were given. They were tested every few months to study what their experimental treatments were doing, but this report gave something else at the bottom of the report. Due to the letter of concern from Madame B a further test had been done. They had injected a frog with a sample of her urine. The test had meant nothing to Bucky, and it wouldn't have to most men at the time but at the bottom of the results, this test was explained. She had tested positive for pregnancy.

Bucky peered over his hands, looking out into the park but not truly seeing it. He should have known better, those girls in his school year who went to visit unheard of aunts? He knew why they did that, he knew that most of them had been caught out on their first time with a boy. It wasn't common but in those instances definitely an accident. Staring out across the park he thought how that probability had increased. He couldn't remember how many times he and Natasha had been together, five, eight?

Regardless, there had been enough time that the young Natalia he knew had begun to show, her stomach was flat, even with a hint of toned muscles, how had they not seen?

He found himself looking at the people in the park, the elderly couple on the next bench down, the old man leaning on his walking stick to sit and his wife sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket over her knees. That was who he should be now, that was who Natasha should be.

He had wondered what might have happened if Natasha had known if she had been able to tell him they were expecting a baby. He imagined them escaping the compound, rifles in their hands and pistols strapped to their waists. He would hide extra weaponry in his pants, she would hide it in her cleavage; they would both hide it in their socks. He knew that they would not have escaped, the soldier and the widow were highly skilled far beyond that of the guards but there were at least twenty times more guards, and if they had got out of range, then what? Beyond the compound was an ancient forest the type where the trees were as big as houses. It was miles deep and neither of them had ever been out of the compound on foot to see what lay beyond. There could be wolves, tigers even, in those trees. If they weren't shot or eaten, then they would have frozen to death.

Still, sitting watching the older man take a thermos from his wife and start to pour warm coffee into their little mugs, Bucky knew he would have tried to escape, no matter what the cost would be, for Natasha and their child that she didn't even know she had.

The final piece of information on the topic was the final report. It mentioned the removal of the Winter Soldier from the compound, before giving brief details of Natasha's care. She was told she needed an anaesthetic and some surgery as part of the trials. She was taken to theatre where they removed the foetus, they then performed a tubal ligation - removing any further chance of her having children. They took that girl, only eighteen years old, and because she was good at what they taught her they thought it wise to lessen her chances of a life outside their clutches.

Had she known, before she gave her life? Had she ever known she had a baby, or when he left had he taken most of her hope with him? He knew how that felt, he had lost her, and Steve had gone on to live the life he deserved but a life that meant passing Bucky by. The mantel of Captain America had been passed on to Sam Wilson, another close friend of Steve's and it wasn't as though Bucky resented that, he was glad the shield went into Sam's hands, he mourned more that everything had moved on around him, both the people he had known and those he hadn't.

He could never go back, his chance at a typical life had died on the same day his baby son or daughter had but he couldn't stay here, not at the moment. He needed something to do, to take a jagged leaf out of Natasha's book and turn things around, or at the very least he had to try. The pictures in his head, the ones of Natasha's smile, of her training and handling herself beyond the capabilities of most other women. The pictures where he imagined holding a young baby in his arms, looking into its tiny face and seeing her green eyes looking back up, these pictures could never come true.

In his few years with the team, in the world of superheroes, he had seen the reality that most didn't see, or didn't want to see. Bucky knew that to give so much, an equal amount had to be taken away. Now, it was his turn to fight as Natasha had, his turn to mould good into the crevasses left by pain. Unlike Steve he would never be the guy to fight for freedom, Bucky would fight to end tragedies like the one which had fallen on his family.


End file.
